1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to photographing equipment capable of photographing a three-dimensional image.
2. Description of the Related Art
Modern portable equipment with a photographing function, such as a digital camera, deals successfully with various photographing scenes at which the equipment has difficulty by making full use of image processing. There has recently been a growing trend toward 3D (three-dimensional) films with emphasis on a sense of realism in the film industry. In the wake of the trend, 3D display equipment has been spreading in the TV industry.
In the field of consumer photographing equipment such as a digital camera as well, apparatuses capable of 3D photographing have been developed. Diverse methods have been proposed to photograph and record an image including stereoscopic information and reproduce and observe the image. In order to enable stereoscopic vision, a right image for a right eye and a left image for a left eye, i.e., two images with a parallax corresponding to observation points of the two left and right eyes need to be picked up.
For example, Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open Publication No. 2007-504511 discloses a process of acquiring a stereoscopic image by performing two photographing operations at horizontally shifted positions using a lens for 2D photographing. Note that an apparatus which acquires a 3D image by simultaneously using two image pickup apparatuses (an image pickup apparatus for picking up a right image and an image pickup apparatus for picking up a left image) has been commercialized.
Modern photographing equipment performs automated photographing that includes identifying a scene and performing photographing best suited to the scene. Photographing equipment of this type is configured to detect a face, movement, brightness, and the like from an image to be picked up and perform exposure, focusing, and image processing according to a scene.